The Tyranny of Oil: Antonia Juhasz on “The World’s Most Powerful Industry—What We Must Do to Stop It”

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah, one of the things that I found fascinating, actually, in doing my own research and as someone who has worked for two members of Congress, was to uncover how this profit—and just to be clear, these are the highest profits in the history of the world, unparalleled with any other industry.

AMY GOODMAN: Which companies?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Big Oil, the big oil companies: Exxon—Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP/Shell, also Marathon and Valero, are the biggest companies operating in the United States. The profits are unparalleled, with the defense industry, pharmaceuticals, banks, you name it, no comparison. So this money just infiltrates every layer of government, from the most local level—I tell the story of Richmond, California, near where I live—to the state level, federal, international, and permeates, not just in campaign contributions, which of course is important—so far, about $1.6 million by the oil industry to McCain-Palin, a little less than $400,000 to the Obama-Biden ticket, a pretty clear difference there, about 75 percent of oil given to Republicans overall. But campaign contributions are just the very tip of the iceberg. It really is lobbying, where the big money comes in. It’s the front groups that you don’t even know are associated with the oil industry, where the influence comes in.

Ms. Juhasz is also the author of a really good about BushCheneyCo's purpose in Iraq. Her book is called the Bush Agenda.

In that Democracy Now interview, I like what Ms. Juhasz has to say about the Palin agenda to drill, baby, drill:

Quote:

So, terrible for the environment—really quickly, on Governor Palin’s constant statement, “clean” offshore drilling? Just like clean coal, absolutely unreal, an unreal statement, for many reasons. One of them is that drilling at water depths of 500 feet or greater—and now we’re talking about water depths of 1,000 feet, 5,000 feet—any drill that—any hole that’s 500 feet or lower releases methane, a greenhouse gas at least twenty times more potent to climate change than CO2. There’s no such thing as clean drilling. It’s just clean and easy for the oil industry to book reserves, environmentally devastating for the rest of us.